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Friday 26 January 2018

Crime up: Plod can go back to work.

There is no direct link between the number of police officers in post and the number of crimes committed. If this were the case, police numbers would have been slashed from those in post in 1996 rather than having remained fairly constant; the UK crime rate has plummeted mostly because the age cohort of the population most likely to commit crime has grown up. 

Now the crime rate is starting to rise again, the knee jerk call is for more police. But wait. Think. What have all those police - whose numbers have hardly changed, remember - been doing since 1996, when there haven't been enough burglars, car thieves or muggers to keep them busy? Isn't it obvious? They've all been sitting at the station watching porn on their computers and patrolling Facebook and Twitter for people being rude. 

During the working day, Twitter used to be the preserve of unemployed people in their underpants. Now you can't move for tweets from plods, bored out of their skulls looking for racists. Well, their time has come. The British criminal has come to their rescue. They can now lever themselves out of their rotating chairs and bloody well get back out on the beat. 


9 comments:

DeeDee99 said...

Come off it.

Their priorities now are investigating ancient rape/sex attack allegations; hate crimes (only if committed by white working class males) and trying to fix up young white males (preferably middle class) on charges of date-rape.

Sebastian Weetabix said...

Patrolling twitter is more agreeable than dealing with doped-up, tooled-up chavs & dindus. You might get hurt. Healthy & safety first!

Sceptical Steve said...

See

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/7908488/Free-the-police-and-save-billions.html

for a comparison of the effectiveness of policing in the UK and Canada, written from the standpoint of a former UK officer who took the opportunity to relocate to Canada. Although the article was written in 2010, I'm pretty certain that the state of the policing in the UK hasn't improved...

Anonymous said...

I'm an avid reader of this blog R. It is well written and interesting but this latest post could have been written by the editor of the Daily Mail. Anti-police with simplistic jibes and stereo-types.
Policing is a very complex issue and cannot be solved by moving police from twitter to the streets.
(PC) Jaded
PS-crime has never really fallen. Successive governments have lied about this issue to score political brownie points. Plus disgraceful senior officers have massaged figures for years.It's open secret in my force and has been going on for years.

John M said...

Well it's a case of "if you don't ask, you don't get" these days isn't it and vast rafts of the public sector, scenting the slightest whiff of a Corbyn Government are all lining up with thier bowls demanding more funding, assisted as always by a plient BBC and media. So right now we have :

1) The NHS still in a state of permenant "crisis" despite currently receiving more than £2,000,000,000 every single week. They are threatening bodies on the streets if they don't get the money.

2) The Military are in crisis and desperately appealing for billions in funding to prevent that Mr Putin fella from invading, despite the fact the last big spending round resulted in them pissing £8bn on two useless aircraft carriers we don't need.

3) The DHSS are in crisis, with the threat of cripples on the streets and soshul unreast innit unless deprived are paid to stay at home.

4) The Police co-ordinate a plea to keep thier gravy train going with nasty little tactics like declaring they are no longer going to investigate burglaries due to lack of resources, whilst at the same time funding the rollout of ANPR faster than you can keep up with them.

anon 2 said...

"Eng'land swings like a pendulum do,
Bobbies on bicycles, two by two,
Westminster Abbey and the Tower of Big Ben,
And the rosy red cheeks of the little children."{Roger Miller}

Miller wouldn't recognise the people now - just the buildings our ancestors put up!

Anonymous said...

If the government stopped inventing new crimes the figure may stabilize. If they decriminalised all victim-less crimes then the figure should improve.

James Higham said...

Ex-Middlesborough mayor, Ray Mallon, put it at 13% real plod work and the rest bureaucracy.

Bill Quango MP said...

for a comparison of the effectiveness of policing in the UK and Canada. He is also the author of Wasting Police Time (Monday Books, £7.99)

I bought that book. And was mightily, mightily shocked at its contents. I followed his blog. And Inspector Gadgets. Until the authorities finaly lawyered them off the internet.
I expect there are similar about the NHS and Fire service and so on.

Why government shuns these serving, educated, knowledgeable people, instead of embracing them, is why nothing improves.